Fermented Home

****UNDER CONSTRUCTION!*****

(Fore)word dump:

Fermented Home is a digital exhibition featuring the work of Morgan Dowdall.

The exhibition explores the stagnation and fermentation of queer bodies in the home at the time of Covid-19. Originally taking a more general exploration of the male nude, Morgan has used their time in lockdown to turn their attention to their own body and relationship with it. Morgan has also began to extend this conversation to the queer bodies in his community, conversations

The idea of fermented home speaks to the confinement and closeting of queer bodies but also the sense of change that inward thinking creates. Stagnation but also a sense of metamorphosis. As our homes and the digital become our only form of queer space, how does our sense of self shift? Queer vulnerability, tenderness. Festering

The artworks are placed in digital ‘rooms’, that are warped and nonsensical. The space is navigated by scrolling, zooming and clicking through doorways and thresholds which progress through the various rooms.

I’ve tried to work in ways that wouldn’t be possible in a physical exhibition; playing with scale, overlapping artworks, introducing elements of texture and abstract 3D forms, as well as movement and animation, creating environments that go beyond replicating a white cube space but instead communicate with the works.





Sentences to keep in mind:

Sexuality has long been intertwined with space, with queerness historically occupying liminal physical spaces within societies

This dependence on physical space for leisure is not unique to queer populations. However, given the (hetero)normative nature of many publicly provided leisure spaces, the queer community often relies on these safe spaces for leisure to negotiate queer identity

By refusing to crystallise in any specific form, queer maintains a relation of resistance to whatever constitutes the normal.

In heteronormative time and space, queer bodies appear estranged, outlandish, and wayward.

Queer space, in this regard, is intimately tied to its inhabitants
Like the dance floor, the house is central to understanding queer space.
These structures become queer only in the sense that they are activated, inhabited and transformed by queer-identifying individuals.

the digital space is not an unknown territory for many LGBTQI+ people, as these were the spaces where many of us took the first steps in exploring our identities

Messily, bodily queerness

Queer exhibitions and queer curating interrogate the passive position of the viewer and demand active engagement, honest investment, and frank questioning, while also leaving room for unanswered questions, gaps, and fissures.

List of works
(doesn't work yet)

working title

Instructions: *Best explored through desktop* Feel free to use your zoom (CRTL +/-) and scroll (directional keys also work) to navigate the space. Doorways and stairs may lead to further exhibit rooms.